


The Gypsy Lover is a Loser

by nagasvoice



Category: The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Swearing, Team Gypsy Moon, Team Mixing Bowl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:01:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagasvoice/pseuds/nagasvoice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen has a higher than normal tolerance for the minor-key wail of the oud and pulse of the drums.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gypsy Lover is a Loser

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Team Mixing Bowl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/960706) by [bliumchik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bliumchik/pseuds/bliumchik), [maharetr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/pseuds/maharetr), [nagasvoice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagasvoice/pseuds/nagasvoice). 
  * Inspired by [Heartlines](https://archiveofourown.org/works/961040) by [joidianne4eva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joidianne4eva/pseuds/joidianne4eva). 



> Cougar being from a Spanish Gypsy tribe means a number of different cultures collided in his family from the time of Al Andaluz, Moorish Spain, after the gypsy tribes arrived there. And of course some of these men also went over with the Conquest, and returned home again, though it might be against all odds. There is a family history there of managing the problems after a soldier comes home acting a little strange, so Cougar is probably used to that.  
> The fanmix for him with his Romany-flamenco background and the earlier Arabic influence is here.  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/960706/chapters/1884505
> 
> Jensen himself is more like pop, techno, dubstep, and when he's with Cougar, he's much more like tribal fusion. So he misses that when Cougar is away.  
> There's two other fanmixes for the Gypsy ante-up 2013 Losers Bang which relate to this short bit.  
> This is Jensen's fanmix list  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/960706/chapters/1884630  
> And here's a second mix with nuevo flamenco, bellydance pieces, a middle section is entirely dance vids.  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/960706/chapters/1885396

The lyrics keep saying “she,” but Jensen always hears “he.” When Cougar is away, such songs bomb Jensen’s playlist, blowing away everything else but the Moroccan and Egyptian and Tunisian musicians.  
He drones along with them, rocking in place, setting the obsessive rhythms on repeat for hours at a time, chanting with tears sometimes. The longing aches through his bones.  
He feels it, how that angular face he finds so mysterious has a history chiseled by hard places. The whole lineage has been cut from rocks by windblown grit from bitter salt pans.  
To be sure, Cougar’s ancestors survived many different kind of harsh places, some of them deadly cold. Maybe it helped him survive in this life, that he was bred with those startling flecks of thorn and rock in his soul. The gunsmithing hands still bear tribute to all the deserts that tried to kill him.  
Cougar doesn’t complain of such places. Apparently it doesn’t occur to him. He’s never expected things to be better for him, certainly not when he was crawling through wadis in firefights and trying to find shelter before sandstorms.  
He doesn’t seek out soft easy places--doesn’t trust it. Cougar’s whole family must have been born knowing not to camp on the nice deep beds of sand found at the bottom of deadly arroyos… places which end up roaring ten feet deep with flash floods.  
Then there’s the intangible things that rise up between him and Cougar with such sharp, instant consequences. Jake knew enough to respect the evasive willfulness of the Romany, forever exiles, and famously proud of it. The furious temper, the cool flourish of the bullfight and the flamenco, not just the stamping death-defying dance with the toreador’s arm gestures, but the deeper music quavering with loss and anguish.  
It’s not just from the man’s Romany ancestors. Those Spanish fathers who left children behind with Cougar’s foremothers were never the sort who stayed home to raise horses and grow oranges and die in bed.  
What Jake didn’t expect was to see such ancestors staring at him from those eyes.  
Cougar has worked wet jobs in the sandbox too long, alone. Even when he does find words, they breath with the howl of wind across the Empty Quarter. When he grows flowery, these rare private love songs ring with the rhythms of muezzin calls down centuries of African Moorish arts and science and culture.  
Cougar’s line is proud of those ancestors who raised stallions on dried dates and camel’s milk and flew falcons after doves, and prouder yet of those Jewish scholars who later on tried to teach superstitious Spanish Catholics how to read their elegant calligraphic mathematics.  
They are defiant about the rough side of their Catholic history, too. The fanatic will and the cruelty of the Conquista, and the grim stubborn resistance of those they conquered have twisted together, irretrievably tangled, from the New World tribes who married into Cougar’s line.  
Their scholars were short barrel-chested warriors from American deserts, tough leather-faced storytellers who lived on pulque and pozole and made their bows of cactus fiber and deer sinew---people with long memories, skilled enough to dodge the endless human sacrifices insisted on by their bitter tribal enemies. Some of those Mexican tribes guided Spanish troops to destroy those tribal enemies, so their villages are remembered and hated for it ever since.  
These conflicting streams of history collide forever in the man, demanding equal obeisance, and get it of the sniper, without argument. Jensen has yet to see in Cougar the signs of compromise between any of those proud extremes.  
That’s why it’s always such a surprise when Cougar lifts his chin, looks down his nose defiantly at Jake, and murmurs, “Lo siento,” with that flash in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”  
This is simply because he is too proud to let any more time go past when an apology is due, and he will not allow it to linger between them, any more than he would leave a gun dirty. That would be cowardice, and Cougar is far too proud to indulge.  
He is also too proud to demand any concessions of Jake if they are not given to him willingly. Jake must want to be with him. Pride forbids that Cougar will ever stoop to chasing after him, or any other signs of nagging doubt. Jealous as all hell the man may be, but he will never, ever admit to it. He will stalk off, furious, but he won’t say a word to warn anyone.  
It gets distinctly weird in bars when Cougar is wading through the women--to be fair, he gives them no encouragement--but Jake merely looks too long at another man, and Cougar’s alarms are shooting off like fireworks, he starts rumbling way off the Richter scale, and any rude thing might set him off. Brawls have been started on less. It’s kind of ridiculous and sweet and scary all at the same time. Sometimes it takes some fancy footwork by Jake to get the man’s focus unstuck from some barfly jerks and reattached where it belongs, and get them both waltzed safely out of there without blowing the whole place all to hell and gone.


End file.
